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According to an explosive new documentary film, Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story, kangaroo meat industry executives, ranchers, landowners and the government officials who support them have conspired to re-brand Australia’s icon as a “pest” and eradicate them in the dark of night for profit.

Meat companies want to kill kangaroos in order to sell their body parts, and ranchers and landowners want them killed in order to keep them off their land. With the help of government officials, the perpetrators disguise the largely unknown slaughter as a necessary cull to curb population growth.

The daily hunt, which takes place during the dark of night, is so brutal that it will leave even the most cynical viewers wondering how this could possibly be happening in modern day times.

Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story

While the filmmakers, Kate McIntyre Clere and Mick McIntyre, introduce us to many villains who are complicit in the atrocities, they also profile the brave activists who jeopardize their freedom and safety in order to expose and stop the wholesale massacre of Australia’s most iconic animal.

The News

Canberra, the capital of Australia, plans to kill 1,600 wild kangaroos in an effort to reduce overgrazing and minimize dangerous interactions between humans and kangaroos. Lawyers for Animal Liberation ACT, an Australian animal rights group, have persuaded a judge to delay the cull, saying “If the government wants to kill more than 1,600 healthy wild animals, we have to be clear that the science is impeccable before we let them do that.” The activists also point out that their babies will have to be killed, “And remember, those 1,600 deaths don’t take into account the joeys that have to be brutally dispatched by shooters after they’ve killed their mothers.”

Photo credit: Time Magazine

News & Opinion

Is a wild animal “cull” ever acceptable? In cases of overpopulation? Starvation? Danger to humans? We don’t cull humans even though we are the most overpopulated species on the planet. Do alternatives to killing, such a birth control and making the environment less hospitable, always exist? As activists, should we formulate our opinions about culls on a case-by-case basis? I don’t know the answers. In this case, Animal Liberation ACT is convinced that the kangaroo cull is cruel and unnecessary, and they need funds to continue to pay for the legal costs to stop it.